UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Santa Barbara

Developing a Reflexive Framework for Sustainable Development –

The Case of Save Lamu

A Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree Master of Arts

in Global & International Studies

by

Michael Joseph Starks

Committee in charge:

Professor Mark Juergensmeyer, Chair

Professor Jan Pieterse

Professor Raymond Clemencon

March 2013 The thesis of Michael Joseph Starks is approved.

______Raymond Clemencon

______Jan Pieterse

______Mark Juergensmeyer, Committee Chair

March 2013

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge my appreciation to my fellow students in the

MAGIS program. Their criticisms and support enabled me to write this thesis and I will remain forever indebted to their brilliance, compassion and commitment. A special thank you to Chris Hortinela, Jamila Benkato and Levi LaChappelle. Doctor

Phil McCarty and Professor Aashish Mehta were springboards for ideas. Their patience and understanding were invaluable as I explored one route, then another, then another. Professor Pieterse, whose views on development thinking transformed my own, challenged me to explore outside of the lines. Professor Juergensmeyer inspired me by his passion and optimism for the human spirit. Professor Clemencon became the steady voice in my head, reminding me to make it practical, to take abstractions and make them relevant.

Finally I would like to thank my family, for they make everything possible in my life. A special thank you to my brother Brian who helped me leap the final hurdles.

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ABSTRACT

Developing a Reflexive Framework for Sustainable Development – The Case of

Save Lamu

by

Michael Joseph Starks

The challenge of sustainable development in an emerging Africa is how to negotiate between increasingly complex competing views and interests. This is especially relevant in the face of rising global risks. I use a case study of the ongoing construction of the LAPSSET Corridor megaproject in Kenya to highlight the complexities and intersections of competing interests. I focus on the relationship between the Government of Kenya and a transnational coalition called Save Lamu. I argue that understanding the process of development, which involves reflexivity as a central element, helps us explore the complexities and intersections. Knowing the interests of stakeholders and how they intersect helps point us towards how these interests may be balanced. The result is a precautionary approach to development which leads to sustainable development.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter I. Development: From Progress to Sustainability ...... 7

A. Roots in Progress ...... 7

B. Development as 'Catch Up' ...... 9

C. Modern Development Thinking ...... 10

D. New Formulations ...... 20

Chapter II. Emerging Africa ...... 29

A. Sub Saharan Africa ...... 29

B. Kenya ...... 36

C. LAPSSET Corridor ...... 39

Chapter III. Exploring Reflexivity in Lamu ...... 47

A. Lamu ...... 47

B. Save Lamu ...... 55

C. The Process of Development ...... 63

Conclusion. Developing a Reflexive Framework for Sustainable Development...... 61

Bibliography ...... 80

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Emerging SSA ...... 30

Figure 2. SSA GNI per capita distribution ...... 33

Figure 3. Emerging East Africa ...... 36

Figure 4. Kenya GDP ...... 37

Figure 5. Growth patterns in Kenya ...... 38

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Introduction

Discussions about development and the world we live in are increasingly framed by arguments about sustainability. The idea of sustainability has come to supplement— and occasionally supplant—the idea of progress as the model of human advancement. Within the development field sustainability is an ideology; not what

(energy, for example), but how (solar/wind). It imposes limitations, yet opens up often suppressed opportunities. In a general sense, the idea of sustainability attempts to provide the answer for three of the largest failures of progress: ecological destruction (the green economy), extreme poverty (inclusive economic growth) and corruption (democratic institutions). Yet how do we get there? How do we fuse horizons, as Charles Taylor put it, towards a more sustainable future? Nowhere are these questions more pertinent than in an emerging Sub Saharan Africa, which remains the battleground for implementing sustainable development.

In this thesis, I ask whether reflexivity in development can lead towards a more sustainable future. Using the case of a transnational coalition called Save

Lamu and their engagement with the construction of the LAPSSET (Transportation)

Corridor by the Government of Kenya, I explore the benefits and challenges of using reflexivity as a tool for understanding development.

The development field is increasingly reflexive (self-aware), as it reflects on, and reacts to, previous and ongoing development theories and practices, what Jan

Pieterse (2009) terms layers of reflexivity. Through the process of collective

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learning, the development field has increasingly shifted towards promoting sustainable practices and adopting a more precautionary orientation informed by the notion of risk. However, the field is not homogenous and thinking about sustainability is diverse and contested. For example, development agencies help draft National Development Plans, which are then opposed by other development agencies on behalf of local communities. This is the case with Save Lamu in Kenya, the focus of the later chapters of this thesis.

Indeed, Pieterse argues there are different standpoints, subjectivities, and cost-benefit equations for each actor, community, and stakeholder involved in development. Local, national, and global interests intersect and conflict. In a world where risks are increasingly deterritorialized and global in nature, reflexivity in development insists that actors and the development field explore the complexities to find where the balance of interests lies.

My research suggests that balancing environmental, social, cultural and economic interests—dispersed across local, national and global spheres—for the common good is the essence of sustainable development. This balancing requires interaction and dialogue between actors at all levels.

But why should balancing these interests lead to sustainable development?

The answer lies in how we view risk and our ability to solve complex, interrelated problems. With the rise of global problems, development has been put on its heels, with these problems obscuring a definitive path forward. One might ask, will increasing people’s wealth allow them to mitigate environmental problems, or is it

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better to focus on preserving the environment? Will training in modern employment help improve livelihoods of young people, or should we ensure that the traditional skills they have be put to use? Especially in the case of large scale development projects, we do not know the answers; it depends on a multitude of factors which vary by location and change by the moment. I find that reflexivity in the process of development becomes an essential component of moving ‘forward’, of exploring the complexities, of balancing interests and achieving sustainable development through a precautionary approach.

In Chapter One I review development thinking over time. I find that reflexivity provides a general basis for understanding policy and planning decisions for the development field; as layers of reflexivity compound and collective learning increases, a greater focus on sustainability becomes seemingly inevitable.

In Chapter Two I explore development interests within an emerging Sub

Sahara Africa (SSA), shifting the focus from SSA to Kenya and its largest development project, the LAPSSET Corridor. I argue that historically economic success has been an ideal ending, yet as the development field increasingly shifts towards sustainability additional questions are now asked. How environmental, social, cultural and economic interests can be balanced remains the key challenge for achieving sustainable development.

In Chapter Three I situate my research at the local level by engaging with the

Save Lamu coalition in Kenya. Tracking Save Lamu’s engagement with the

LAPSSET Corridor, I argue that understanding the process of development, which

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involves reflexivity as a central element, allows us to assess the likelihood of arriving at a new balance, and guides us in how it might be achieved.

In the concluding section I propose a reflexive framework for understanding the process of development which help point towards, and track, friction points between actors over time. This provides guidance on how a balance of interests might be achieved. Furthermore I present a critique of reflexivity, concerning reflexivity’s ability to influence outcomes when asymmetries exist between actors. I end by pointing to areas which deserve further study.

My interest in the LAPSSET Corridor began in 2008 when Kenya’s Vision 2030 development agenda was released. At the time I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the town of Isiolo, Kenya, which would be a focal point of the Corridor. My interest in the project was further peaked when later that year I visited Old Town Lamu, a

UNESCO World Heritage Site, located on Lamu island off the northern coast of

Kenya. The epicenter of the LAPSSET Corridor would be a megaport built just north of the island.

In August 2011 I returned to Old Town Lamu and spent the next three months living there, attempting to gain a meaningful understanding of the unfolding situation. The reason for choosing Lamu was that the LAPSSET Corridor was only beginning to move from idea to implementation phase, and Lamu was where the first stages of the project would begin.

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The question that I set out to explore when I arrived in Lamu was normative: what type of alternative development should be occurring in Lamu? It had been hard to gather information about the project and the response on the ground before I arrived. I had many assumptions; the largest being that I figured the local population would be extremely worried about the UNESCO World Heritage Site designation for

Old Town Lamu.

The question I walked away with in November 2011 was more complicated, more attuned to the dynamics of the situation. Over the course of a few short months

I had seen how the views of Save Lamu had evolved to meet changing circumstances. Save Lamu had undergone learning and this learning shifted the process. This reflexivity gave me a greater appreciation of the both the challenges and the opportunities that the development of the LAPSSET Corridor presented.

The LAPSSET Corridor is a new project which will unfold over the next fifteen years, and so in this thesis I focus on building a reflexive framework for analyzing the project, a framework that I believe is generalizable to other development projects.

A thesis that is focused on reflexivity between actors cannot fail to address the self- reflexivity of the researcher. I spent three months in Kenya (and had previously lived for three years in Kenya as a member of the Peace Corps). During that time I spent much of my time in tourist haunts, sitting in the corner of cafés or eating at western style restaurants attached to the higher end lodges (where there was free

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internet). I watched the tourists, the lodge owners and Europeans who owned local homes, and the people who worked with them, and listened to their conversations. I joined groups of tourists on boat trips around the islands, or fishing excursions. I wanted to know what brought the tourists to Lamu, what drove the Europeans and

Americans to buy houses and spend part of the year here. The Kenyans saw me interact in this way; knew that I had money to spend.

Yet I also ate in small hotelis (the local restaurants) scooping up the food with my hands, speaking Kiswahili with strangers, dressed in a local kikoyi wrap; attempting to display a sensitivity and appreciation of the culture. I walked the same paths daily so that I would become a recognizable face, introduced myself and made small talk with vendors along the way. After a few weeks the man who I bought coconuts from daily asked me, Ulipoteza wapi bwana? (Where have you been lost to?) after I failed to show up one day.

My access to the Save Lamu coalition was controlled by Hadija Ernst (who I had briefly been in contact with via email before arriving in Lamu) and Samia Omar, who were, besides making up the majority of women in the Save Lamu coalition, also Western educated. They offered me deep insights into Save Lamu, as well as providing many documents pertaining to their work, while keeping me away from other members. It was a tradeoff I never fully understood, but was willing to accept.

My time in Lamu provided me a much greater insight and appreciation for the issues and people involved. The research in this thesis was occasionally clarified by

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sources found online, mainly consisting of research articles, organizational and government websites, press releases, and newspaper articles.

Chapter I Development: From Progress to Sustainability

A. Roots in Progress

Development has traditionally been embedded in western, secular notions of progress and modernity, both of which sprout from the same roots.

In his essay, The Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet (1979) lays out the arguments for and against progress quite succinctly. First, he argues, “In its most common form the idea of progress has referred, ever since the Greeks, to the advance of knowledge, more particularly the kind of practical knowledge contained in the arts and sciences.” Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, during the Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns in France in the late 1700’s, argued that “the human mind is as good today, as rich in reason and imagination, as ever it was in the past.” Therefore, “…if men today are as well constituted physically and mentally as were the men of antiquity, then it follows that there has been and will continue a definite advancement of both the arts and the sciences, simply because it is possible for each age to build upon what has been bequeathed to it by preceding ages.”

Nisbet cites Georges Sorel’s The Illusions of Progress, to show how superficial the conclusion can be. If we build upon knowledge of the previous ages, then we are always advancing in knowledge. Therefore, Sorel argues, it should hold true that “We, as a human race, know more than did our primitive forerunners: ergo,

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a seventeenth century dramatist is bound to be greater than one of the fifth century

B.C.”

Needless to say, the modernist view became dominant: mankind has advanced in culture, is now advancing, and will continue to advance during a long future ahead, and that this advance is the result solely of human causes.

Beginning with Turgot, and further explored by the Enlightenment thinkers, is progress beyond the arts and sciences, now applicable to the whole of culture.

Hence we see Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the first economics treatise, but also focused on, “…a natural order of the progress of nations…Smith's "invisible hand" is as much directed toward the mechanics of progress through time as it is the stability of the economic system.” Rousseau, in his Third Discourse on Political Economy and Social Contract shows “…how progress [is] achieved—through the instituting of the general will and, with this, complete and enveloping social equality.”

Besides furthering ideas on progress, Smith and Rousseau remain influential as early theorists on development and political economy. Their works are some of the earliest to point out the failures of progress (Smith focusing on the dislocations of the industrial revolution and the resulting squalor and poverty, while Roussaeu emphasizes the negative impact of private property and the rise of social inequality).

Progress remained future oriented, with Smith and Rousseau placing the inequities of their times “…in a developmental context, one that when properly aided by human action, will yield a golden future.”

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The paradox of progress surrounded all of the early thinkers. Violence and exploitation unfolded in the world around them, but the idea of progress never wavered. If rational thought, building off previous knowledge could be applied to the human situation, the outcome would be progress.

As Mario Blaser (2009) pointed out, with an active idea of progress the modern, industrial West represented a higher stage in a process of unending evolution, with the ‘traditional rest’ residing at various stages of earlier evolution

(located closer to nature). This linear, evolutionary trajectory, “…justified treatment of the Other, along with nature, as objects amenable to being disciplined and reformed according to the designs of the modern West” (Blaser, 2009 p. 439).

B. Development as ‘Catch Up’

As Jan Pieterse (2009) argues, development need not be linear. This is a

Eurocentric, top-down view of history which fails to take into account the multiplicity of global experience.

If we apply a global perspective towards development we find that India and

China dominated economically for nearly the past 2000 years (The Economist,

August 2010). The West played ‘catch up’ to the East (other earlier comparisons are equally relevant), yet global integration was still at an early stage. Spanish conquest, followed by the Netherlands placed Britain in a ‘catch up’ role, while expanding the globalizing role of conquest. The industrial revolution in Britain and the resulting laissez faire capitalist economy forced the ‘catch up’ of other Western and Central

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European countries, including the late developed nations of Germany, the United

States and Japan.

In this light, we see development as the creation of a dominant model that must be caught up to. Yet this dominant model is always shifting. We see this again with the rise of the BRICS, and especially China. Indeed the shift from West to East is accelerating faster than the original shift from East to West (The Economist, June

2012). World Systems Analysis is instructive in this respect, showing the effects of

‘not catching up’: domination, exploitation, underdevelopment and unequal development. Thus colonialism, imperialism, dependency, post-colonialism (etc.) explain how the system has continued to be perpetuated.

Development can thus be seen occurring at two levels. The first is at the national level, where the question is of catching up. The second is within the nation.

Hence we see Adam Smith reflecting on the role of development to remove poverty and improve society during the Industrial Revolution. Development within the nation is focused on resolving the failures of progress; the dislocations of catching up. Here extreme poverty becomes not only a failure of progress, but a symptom of attempting to catch up.

C. Modern Development Thinking

Modern development thinking evolved in a Keynesian environment with the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions. It was spawned by the success of the Marshall

Plan and Soviet industrialization and focused on providing economic convergence.

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Early economic development focused on gross national income growth (over

5% per year) which would trickle down in the form of economic opportunities.

Corruption, white elephant projects (mal-investment) and moving finances to overseas bank accounts (especially within SSA), however, often led to growth which failed to trickle down. What mattered were quality investments and a certain type of growth (Todaro & Smith, 2010).

Modern development interacted with forms of colonialism (post-neo), cold war politics, and imperialism. It put in place institutions and forms which attempted to replicate the success of the West and promoted Western educated leaders who fit into the system. However, local needs were rarely adequately addressed due to geopolitics, corruption, and failed policies.

In 1969 Dudley Seers argued, utilizing what he referred to as a Gandhian approach, that development has three essential elements: reducing poverty (the ability to purchase physical necessities), reducing unemployment (moving from idleness to activity) and reducing inequality. Thus to determine if a country is developing, one should not look at per-capita income, per se, but ask: What has been happening to poverty? What has been happening to unemployment? What has been happening to inequality? National income, he argued, is important only as a measure of development potential (Seers, 1969).

While adding multiple elements beside economic growth as indicators of success, the focus remained on shifting production from agrarian to industrial society, as agricultural production garnered low profits and growth opportunities.

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Countries attempted to do so through import substitution industrialization (ISI) and export oriented industrialization (EOI). With the rise of China there was a permanent recognition, if not movement, towards export oriented industrialization across all countries. Indeed the shock therapy applied to the emerging nations of

Eastern Europe represented an attempt to hasten the export process.

What is clear is that the evolution of development has risen from a mix of failures and successes. The currency crises of ISI led to the technocratic fix of the

Washington Consensus, and subsequently to the neoliberal political distortion of the

Consensus. This was coupled with the rise of monetarism and the transformation of capital flows. These flows of ‘hot money’ led to financial crises in Asia and helped guide China in its pick and choose approach to global integration. Indeed the rise of

China through EOI and state intervention brought forth a fundamental rethinking of development.

The evolution of development thinking has led to a multiplicity of development approaches. Problems are addressed in multiple forms, at multi-scalar levels, and through different institutional lenses.

The strongest movements from below, as Manoranjan Mohanty (2007) argues, are calls for Peoples Democratic Organizations (PDOs). These organizations call for rights to local self-determination. They are focused on finding local solutions to the local application of problems of global scale. PDOs struggle to find their place as the current analytical frame of development remains the nation state.

According to Natural Justice, an international NGO, the State has taken on the role

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of parens patriae, making decisions on behalf of communities on the pretext that communities are unorganized and do not have effective decision-making structures.

There is also global civil society, a transnational network of organizations which operate within, across and above nation states. Global civil society acts as a global ‘watchdog’, critiquing both public and private responses to development needs. It also acts as a provider of services within the shrinking neoliberal state, as well as offering a potential third sector—a route for exploratory instruments of development (though this is increasingly critiqued—see Michael Edwards, Mary

Kaldor).

Currently, international governmental organizations (IGOs) such as the UN,

World Bank and IMF provide expertise, advice, rules and guidelines that have become more nuanced in their application and acceptance of local, national, regional and global needs. However, they remain top-down organizations which dictate institutional forms and the lenses through which development is often understood

(think of structural adjustments or the Millennium Development Goals).

There is also a greater mix between national governments and business. The rise of public-private partnerships to fund programs and projects is increasing.

Organizations at all levels interact, creating a mixed, hybrid network of responses to meet development challenges. These approaches often seem contradictory at the implementation level and lead for greater calls for a cogent response through both global governance as well as more self-determination for local communities. A fundamental debate continues: is development best approached

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through top-down or bottom-up approaches? Economists refer to this as the planners and seekers debate. This debate, however, unnecessarily creates a simple binary choice. Any complex system is difficult to reduce to a simple schematic. And why not both, and middle approaches? It is disingenuous to fail to take into account the various different multilateral, governmental, civil society and private sector actors that actually shape global conditions. These arise and are implemented at all levels.

Richard Peete (2005) defines mainstream development as improvement, rooted in the idea of progress. Development as improvement is normative and prescriptive; focused on what development should be. This is the dominant paradigm in the development field.

Mainstream development calls for goals and outcomes that result in various stakeholders’ ‘vision’ of development becoming reality. It is results oriented, focused on identifying and managing successes and failures. A continuous cycle of identifying new goals and targets (for example, the Millennium Development Goals

(MDGs) which will be replaced by a Post 2015 Development Agenda) helps hide the fact that historically goals and targets of the development field have rarely been met.

Peete argues that mainstream development is “both the best and the worst of human projects – best in terms of potential and worst in terms of its sorry contemporary practices” (p. 2). The grand opus of mainstream development is that human ingenuity can lead to a golden future. It is a powerful, utopian vision, which calls for the best of humanity.

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Mainstream development is viewed as an exogenous intervention, prescribed by the development field to, and in partnership with, endogenous actors. Thus development is intentional (distinct from immanent development–what people are doing anyway).

If we view development as progress then one goal of development becomes improving the human condition. The generalness of this goal keeps the field of development expansive, for improving the human condition must entail multiple aspects, depending on the views of the various stakeholders.

For the purpose of this thesis, improving the human condition represents an interpretation of progress as it relates to a multivariate benchmark of indicators. One need only look at the Millennium Development Goals, World Development Report and Human Development Index, or listen to arguments by Amartya Sen on development as freedom, Jeffrey Sachs on institutional reform, David Landes on matters of culture or William Easterly on microeconomic growth models (to name but a select few) to witness the breadth of actions taken to achieve this goal.

If improving the human condition is rooted in western notions of progress, then mainstream development has also been the means, not to improve the human condition generally, but to improve the human condition in a certain direction.

Development arose from both the dislocations of industrialization and capitalism and the divergence between a western minority and a global majority; it came in where progress failed. Thus a second goal of development is to fix the failures of progress by providing convergence.

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Convergence provides the ‘special case’ for the development field, not to improve the human condition in all places, but rather for specific nations; traditionally, to catch up to the industrialized west and provide a global parity. We often speak of these ‘special cases’ in terms of core-periphery or North-South divide.

Although convergence has been problematized over the last thirty years of neoliberalism, the current imperatives of globalization and global integration keep it a key ingredient in the development dish. As Ulrich Beck (2001 p.83) said, “…the threat is no longer of an invasion but of the non-invasion (or withdrawal) of investors. There is only one thing worse than being overrun by big multinationals: not being overrun by multinationals.”

For the purpose of this thesis, convergence manifests itself as the creation of institutions, policies, new technologies and economic mechanisms which give nations the capacity to deal with and interact as a member of the global community

(this does not necessarily imply uniformity, but rather parity).

Post-development authors such as Arturo Escobar argue that mainstream development monopolizes conceptions of progress and is Eurocentric and dystopian.

Escobar (1995 p. 215) summarized post-development theory as, (1) an interest not in development alternatives, but in alternatives to development, and thus a rejection of the entire paradigm, (2) an interest in local and indigenous knowledge, (3) a critical stance towards established scientific discourses, and (4) the defense and promotion of localized, pluralistic grassroots movements.

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The problem with post-development, as Jan Pieterse (2000) points out, is that it homogenizes development (which is continuously adopting and coopting new ideas). Indeed mainstream development has increasingly adopted the second through fourth parts. Post-development’s outright rejection of development has come under heavy criticism as it fails to provide an alternative. If not development, what?

Adam Szirmai (2005) argues that a challenge to development is that development communities often analyze collective learning in short-term perspectives. This in turn leads to development that is focused on specific short-term goals, at the expense of long-term development, what Szirmai terms, “a certain trendiness in thinking about development” (p. 2). Thus we find that as situations change, so do the remedies.

Pieterse (2009) suggests that another way of looking at development over time is as layers of reflexivities, that is, reactions to, and reflections on preceding development policies and theory. He terms this reflexive development. Reflexive development dovetails with Beck’s (1992) idea of reflexive modernity, “the condition in which the moderns are increasingly concerned with managing the problems created by modernity” (from Pieterse 2009, 192). This gives rise to Becks risk society and the globalization of risk. Ecological, financial and security risks—as well as actors such as MNCs, global civil society and terrorist groups—become deterritorialized and global in nature.

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In this view we find that reflexivity in the development field leads to a healthy skepticism about what development action and policy can achieve and increasingly the adoption of a precautionary orientation informed by the notion of risk. Mario Blaser (2009, 443) points to the rise of what Beck termed “sub-politics” in political decisions. These are the social movements and collective participation— often global—outside of the normal political framework which influence decisions which were once the exclusive domain of ‘experts’. Thus the views and visions of relevant actors at various levels (local to transnational) must be taken into account.

Development as process is descriptive and focused on what development is.

It provides tools for analyzing how and why development occurs. Development becomes directionless, neither progress nor regress. It does not result in theories but focuses on trends and processes of formation, interpretation and negotiation. Pre- ordained outcomes lose importance. The process itself becomes development.

In this vein, Pieterse (2009) defines development as a “collective learning experience” (p. 191). Too often progress as improvement has created binary options.

This is backwards, this is forwards. This is success, this is failure. This is modern, this is pre-modern. Pieterse argues that there are different standpoints, subjectivities, cost-benefit equations, for each actor, community, stakeholder; that local, national and global interests intersect and conflict. Development as learning insists that actors explore the complexities to find where the balance of interests lies. Friction points become important as indicators of balancing.

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Yet the goals of different actors may shift in the course of action, become clarified, redefined, or co-opted. Thus development becomes contextual, temporary; understood and negotiated as a matter of learning. Development as improvement is too simple of an aim as we ask: amongst all actors, whose improvement, whose loss?

For this thesis I define development as the intentional engineering of social, cultural, economic and institutional change, driven by complex interactions between local, national, regional and global interests, which, through the very process of development, allows for negotiation of these interests.

Reflexivity in the development field provides guidance in planning for, negotiating and evaluating development. As layers of reflexivity compound and collective learning increases, the development field identifies the failures of development. This gives development a limited, normative direction. Yes, the process determines the outcome, but we shouldn’t call outcomes development if the result is the continuation or exacerbation of development failures (such as corruption).

In this view the development field veers the process of development, not in a specific, progressive direction (since we will never know if the outcome is progress until ex-post), but rather, away from the largest identified failures. Thus the development field puts in place structures to guide development in certain directions, yet it remains creative and exploratory in proposing ways to solve development failures. Or put differently, we now find that development projects must

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increasingly meet a minimum threshold of global standards, yet after that, the attempt to balance competing interests occurs.

D. New Formulations

Thirty years of neoliberalism has codified itself into our current sense of normal.

Neoliberalism attempts to rid development of its special status, as all countries compete equally under the mantle of the free market. Thus the logic of economic growth and credit rating agencies (CRAs) is now applied to such core countries as

Italy, Spain and Greece during the Euro-zone crisis and within the US post-industrial crisis. Global poverty, the absolute number of people living on less than $2 a day increases in developing countries, yet fears of a homogenized global poor labor class

(across all countries), driven by a wage race downwards, also increases. The north- south divide disappears under the (in)equality of the market.

Globalization and neoliberalism have increasingly meant thinking of development in terms of integration into the global economy. The meteoric rise of

China and the emergent BRICS countries shows the value of global integration.

Global integration means playing by capitalist rules, yet the implementation of capitalism varies across the global spectrum and must be understood as a political game. Dani Rodrick (2011) argues that “Markets are not self-creating, self- regulation, self-stabilizing, or self-legitimizing. Every well-functioning market economy blends state and market, laissez-faire and intervention. The precise mix depends on each nation’s preferences, its international position, and its historical trajectory. But no country has figured out how to develop without placing

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substantial responsibilities on its public sector” (p22). Therefore various forms of capitalism, ‘capitalisms’, emerge that fit the political will of a nation (and accounts for such social differences as between northern Europe, USA and China).

If global integration entails forms of capitalism undertaken as a political activity, then modernity also becomes pluralized, with ‘multiple modernities’; every nation capable of becoming modern, but modern in its own way, with its own capacity to deal with and interact as a member of the global community (Woolcock

2009, Pieterse 2009). Thus the creation of institutions, political structures, technological development and economic mechanisms which give nations the capacity to deal with and interact as a member of the global community become essential components of both providing development and becoming modern.

What we end up with is development as a process of collective learning and a political act of implementation and the two cannot be divorced. Indeed Pieterse

(2009) argues that governments won’t give up power and privilege because of learning and reflexivity. They do so only under collective action. Thus reflexivity must inform a collective action that challenges and transforms power relations.

Development therefore, like capitalism or modernity, varies according to political will. It would be simplistic, however, to claim that it only varies according to political will. The history of development is replete with development failures, even in circumstances of strong political will. Thus development is contingent on how it is contextualized in any given location and circumstance.

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The argument for convergence is tinged in controversy, as the development field asks, converging towards what, and for whose benefit? As noted by Blaser

(2009), Foucalt argues that development is a disciplinary technique of control which increasingly integrates the world into the capitalist economy. Yet as noted above, the capitalist economy isn’t homogenous. The broader point is that capitalism and global cooperation can, and will, shift. Although I call for the creation of institutions and political structures that can provide for management of global integration, this does not mean that this will always hold true. Development may one day call for global disintegration, localization, regionalization, or other forms.

The future forms of economic and global cooperation will, to a large extent, be dictated by how modernity is defined, redefined, or replaced. In an idealized

Western modernity all things pre-modern ‘disappear’. Thus in SSA, pre-modern indigenous peoples (such as pastoralists or hunter/gathers) within nations are suppressed, expelled and marginalized in favor of communities participating in agriculture. Indigenous peoples are only allowed to participate in development by refuting cultural practices and adopting ideally modern activities and lifestyles. This transition, which on one hand could be warranted based on low life-expectancy, malnutrition, and other health indicators, often results in deteriorating health and economic outcomes (extreme poverty).

If development is unilinear, societies moving from stage to stage, or as Ha-

Joong Chang (2002) describes it—climbing the development ladder—then this still

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might be progress; merely the growing pains of development. Over time, populations would then be transitioned into industrial industries and service sectors in urban populations. Financialization would become the apex of development. This is happening. Unfortunately the apex of development resulted in the 2008 financial crisis.

It is likely that soon enough India will become the world’s third largest economy, and when it does so, it will be a country that consists of a small manufacturing base, a mid-sized urban middle class service economy and an expansive rural peasantry. This example illustrates how top-down and bottom-up approaches can be blended into new formulations of development. Kusum Nair’s ground breaking book, Blossom in the Dust (1961), further illustrate this. Nair’s historic research in rural Indian villages suggests issues of social and political development are just important as economic development (a topic we return to in the case of Save Lamu). Rural Indians were largely uninterested in economic development if it did not preserve their social and cultural traditions (and remain so today).

India, however, has long grappled with the notion of unilinear progress. This is highlighted by the controversy over the Sardar Sarovar Dam. Economically speaking, large infrastructure projects have the potential to provide great benefits to nations. Indeed the Indian Supreme Court (2000) in their ruling in favor of continued construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam highlighted the potential economic benefits. They cited a World Bank study undertaken in 1990:

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The argument in favour of the Sardar Sarovar Dam is that the benefits are so large that they substantially outweigh the costs of the immediate human and environmental disruption. Without the dam, the long term costs for people would be much greater and lack of an income source for future generations would put increasing source on the environment…The project has the potential to feed as many as 20 million people, provide domestic and industrial water to about 30 million, employ about 1 million, and provide valuable peak electric power in an area with high unmet power demand. In addition, recent research shows substantial economic "multiplier" effects (investment and employment triggered by development) from irrigation development. Set against the futures of about 70,000 project affected people, even without the multiplier effect, the ratio of beneficiaries to affected persons is well over 100:1.

The Indian Supreme Court further suggested that the forced expulsion of nearly a million people for construction of the Narmada Valley Project in India (which included the Sardar Sarovar Dam) might be merely a growing pain of progress. They wrote:

The displacement of the tribals and other persons would not per se result in the violation of their fundamental or other rights. The effect is to see that their rehabilitation at new locations they are better off than what they were. At the rehabilitation sites they will have more and better amenities than which they enjoyed in their tribal hamlets. The gradual assimilation in the mainstream of the society will lead to betterment and progress.

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Or the megaproject could be a symptom of something larger and more deleterious, as

Arundati Roy (1999) wrote:

Big dams are to a Nation's 'Development' what Nuclear Bombs are to its Military Arsenal. They're both weapons of mass destruction. They're both weapons Governments use to control their own people. Both Twentieth Century emblems that mark a point in time when human intelligence has outstripped its own instinct for survival. They're both malignant indications of civilisation turning upon itself.

There is growing recognition that we are moving towards living in what Ulrich Beck terms a ‘risk society’. “Modern society has become a risk society in the sense that it is increasingly occupied with debating, preventing and managing risks that it itself has produced” (Beck, 2006 p.332). Beck terms this reflexive modernity, whereby modern society is increasingly focused on managing the very problem of modernity.

“The irony of risk here is that rationality, that is, the experience of the past, encourages anticipation of the wrong kind of risk, the one we believe we can calculate and control, whereas the disaster arises from what we do not know and cannot calculate. The bitter varieties of this risk irony are virtually endless; among them is the fact, that, in order to protect their populations from the danger of terrorism, states increasingly limit civil rights and liberties, with the result that in the end the open, free society may be abolished, but the terrorist threat is by no means averted” (Beck, 2006 p. 330).

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Modernity as a contextualized reality is contested and evolving. The most egregious failure of modernity is society’s relationship with nature. Ecological crisis from industrialization (the backbone of development), including, but not limited to climate change, forces critical discussion about societies relationship with nature. In Sub

Saharan Africa ecological crises is coupled with corrupt governance and extreme poverty to form a severe constraint against solving development problems. These are coupled with volatile financial flows, evolving production and trade patterns, and transnational terrorism, thus placing governments in the position of having to navigate between the interplay and complexity of competing, yet often interrelated problems.

Crises such as climate change, however, are not only about breakdowns, but also about the possibility of breakthroughs. Or as John Holloway (2010) puts it, cracks in the structure reveal opportunities. The opportunity is the creation of a new equilibrium, a new normalcy.

The crisis of reaching the ecological limits of (modern) industrialization calls for redefining development and what it means to be modern. As Craig Calhoun

(2012) argues, it is the semi-periphery nations which more often take risks and implement changes. Thus, changes and actions outside of the core energize sympathetic progressive forces within core states. Tahrir square leads to the Occupy

Movement. Modernity is hegemonic, but challenged.

The emerging new modernity is sustainability. Yet sustainable development within the development field has been largely a failure. The term has become overly

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inclusive, resulting in development confusion. Its use has splintered into questions of economic, sociopolitical and environmental sustainability with economic interests usually trumping environmental ones. There is also a failure to include culture as a critical aspect of sustainable development. Attempts such as the Earth Charter to provide guidance on what true global sustainable development might look like are discounted as being utopian and socially unjust to low income countries (LICs) which argue that they should be allowed to industrialize and not be penalized for the behavior of developed countries. Indeed this is laid out by the UNFCCC under the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’.

The example of China is illustrative of the current challenges of sustainable development. In China more than 600 million people moved out of extreme poverty between 1981 and 2004 (World Bank) and China was hailed as a model for poverty reduction. Over the same time period, per capita CO2 emissions within China rose from 1.46 to 4.08 metric tons (World Development Indicators). China’s economy has mushroomed into the second largest in the world. It has also recently surpassed

America to become the world’s largest emitter of CO2 (in gross emissions).

China has sustainably reduced poverty through sustained economic growth, while only more recently beginning to address the environmental sustainability challenges of fossil fuel powered development. It shifts environmental sustainability out of the short-term discussion. It meets the economic and sociopolitical dimensions of sustainability first, and then environmental sustainability can be addressed over the long-term (continuing to exclude questions of culture).

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This line of thinking can also be found within the UN. At the Fourth UN

Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in May 2011, Secretary

General Ban Ki-moon called for a “comprehensive and ambitious Programme of

Action for sustained economic growth” in the LDCs (UN News Centre, 2011). The conference noted that a continuing rise in primary commodities in the international market had led to higher growth rates in LDCs. Yet there are serious questions about the sustainability of resource extraction and exporting raw materials. Not only does it often diminish access for future generations, but exporting oil which will add to

CO2 emissions and exacerbate climate change will negatively affect LICs (and

LDCs especially) as they can least afford to adapt to climate crises. Thus a vicious cycle is created whereby economic growth and industrialization powered by fossil fuel use may lead to short-term reductions in poverty, but increases in CO2 emissions will increase climatic changes, likely leading to long-term increases in poverty, and increasing catastrophes (droughts, floods, etc.) which result in economic damages and more importantly, in loss of life. We have placed developing countries in a ‘catch 22’, especially when we realize that developing countries whose economies are dependent on producing oil are at risk, as mitigation may impact their sources of revenue.

If we view the development field over time as layers of reflexivity, we obtain a general basis for understanding policy and planning decisions for the development field. As layers of reflexivity compound and collective learning increases, a greater

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focus on sustainability becomes seemingly inevitable. Even though the focus is on sustainability, ideas and application of sustainable development remain heterogenous and continuously shifting.

In Chapter Two I explore development interests within an emerging Sub

Sahara Africa (SSA), shifting the focus from SSA to Kenya and its largest development project, the LAPSSET Corridor. Historically, economic success has been an ideal ending, yet as the development field increasingly shifts towards sustainability additional questions are now asked. I argue that balancing economic, social, environmental and cultural interests—dispersed across local, national and global spheres—is the essence of sustainable development, and a key challenge. In

Chapter Three I suggest that understanding development as process, which involves reflexivity as a central element, points us towards balancing these interests and achieving true sustainable development.

Chapter II Emerging Africa

A. Emerging Africa

The last decade has seen what is being termed, variously, the Rise of Africa (NY

Times), Africa Unleashed (Foreign Affairs), though the most common term is

Emerging Africa (Center for Global Development, Brookings Institute, IMF,

Financial Times, The Economist, etc.). This Afro-optimism arises from the ashes of two decades of lost development. Indeed in 2000 The Economist called Africa ‘The

Hopeless Continent’. Yet the shift towards an emerging Africa has been strong and

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based on structural changes in both the global political economy and ideological transformations within Africa. Michael Hollman of the Financial Times (Feb, 2012) argues that Africa should be excited for its future based not only on its booming oil exports and high commodities prices, but on its work-ready population of nearly 1 billion, with nearly two-thirds under the age of 21. These human and material resources are now coupled with cheap loans from China, remittances from the diaspora, and increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) to see a boom in projects across the continent.

Scarlet Cornelissen (2011) argues that beyond the oil and commodities booms, the successful growth in telecommunications, finance and tourism sectors points towards a diversification of Africa’s economic bases. A glance at leading economic indicators provides a quick snapshot of the stark and positive trajectory of

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the past ten years (see Figure 1: Emerging SSA).

As the graphs below demonstrate, the global economic crisis of 2008 led to a dip in economic indicators, yet the continent weathered the crisis better than the developed world, with many economic indicators rebounding between 2009 and

2010. The 2011 UNCTAD Economic Development in Africa Report suggests that

"Inflows to Africa are expected to recover as a result of stronger economic growth, ongoing economic reforms and high commodity prices, as well as improving investor perceptions of the continent, mainly from other emerging markets".

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Figure 1. Emerging SSA

SSA GDP (current SSA GDP per capita

US$) (current US$)

2,000.00 1,500 $1,302

$1,112 US $ 1,000 1,000.00 500 GDP per GDP GDP GDP billions in 0.00 0 capita

GDP percapita,current

1990 1970 1980 2000 2010 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 1960

SSA Goods Imports SSA Goods Exports

(BoP, current US$) (BoP, current US$) 400 400 $335 $315 200 200 Goods Goods 0

Imports 0 Exports

Imports,in billions

Exports, billions in

2009 1977 1981 1985 1989 1993 1997 2001 2005

SSA Foreign Direct Investment SSA International

Net

(BoP, current US$) Tourism Receipts 40 $29 20 (current US$) 0 50 $24 FDI International

0 Receipts billions in

FDI FDI billions in Tourism

1983 1978 1988 1993 1998 2003 2008

Receipts

2000 2005 2010 1995

Source: World Bank

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Increased regional and global economic integration is the catalyst for the skyrocketing figures over the past ten years. SSA’s evolving relationship with Asia, and especially its relationship with China (though India and Japan are increasing actively players) has been instrumental in SSA’s economic revival. China’s voracious appetite for resources as well as opening up new export markets plays an important part in Africa’s emergence. According to Dambisa Moyo (2012) Chinese

FDI in Africa went from under $100 million in 2003 to over $12 billion in 2011.

Moyo also notes that in 2009 China surpassed the US as the single largest trading partner to Africa. Indeed The Economist Intelligence Unit Report 2011 suggests that

“In 2012 it is likely that non-OECD countries will take over as the primary export market for China”. The importance of South-South trade increases. It is not only

China, however, that sees Africa as a more attractive emerging market. Indeed Ernst

& Young’s 2012 Africa Attractiveness Survey finds that three of the top five fastest growing investors into new projects in Africa are African. Meanwhile, American companies have begun to push back against perceived Chinese domination in Africa.

The US initiated the largest number of new projects in Africa in 2011.

Let me make two quick points about speaking of Sub-Saharan Africa as an emerging whole. As the graphs above demonstrate, Sub-Saharan Africa seems to be improving dramatically. However, is there value in speaking of the continent as a whole, especially in relation to its emerging status? Isn’t it better to speak of regions, such as French speaking West Africa or Kiswahili speaking East Africa? Or

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even better, of individual countries (there are 48 in SSA with diverse cultures, languages, political structures, etc.)?

Let me first address the issue of the emerging status of the continent as a whole. Using the World Bank Database I average growth rates of GNI per capita,

PPP of all SSA countries for each of the previous three decades. I use GNI per capita as it helps address the question of population size and growth. The result is an average growth rate of 3.61% in the 1980s, 2.07% in the 1990s and 4.65% from

2000-2011. To test whether this data is skewed by outlying countries I use GNI per capita, PPP (current international$) to look at growth across countries and the continent as a whole. The graph below (Figure 2: SSA GNI per capita distribution) shows a sample of 7 SSA countries, as well as an average of all SSA countries GNI per Capita growth. Since 1980, only one country in Sub Saharan Africa, Liberia, has seen a decline in GNI per capita. The average for all SSA countries is growth from a standardized base of 100 to 450 (more than quadrupling GNI per capita over the past thirty years). The median growth, however, is 285 (nearly tripling GNI per capita).

Although the four largest growing countries of Mauritius, Cape Verda, Botswana and Equatorial Guinea skew the results upwards, the take away is that countries in

Sub Saharan Africa are emerging and experiencing faster growth than in previous decades. Of course there is also value in looking at individual countries to validate this assumption, and I do so later in this section.

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Figure 2. SSA GNI per capita distribution

Source: World Bank

Note: A challenge of the dataset is that the World Bank lacks GNI per capita information for three countries: Somalia, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe, while Sao Tome and Principe has data for only the past five years.

Second, in relation to speaking of Sub Saharan Africa as a whole, Africa

continues to be perceived as a homogenous whole. This is problematic when

conflicts in certain countries (Somalia, DRC, etc.) have spillover effects on

perceptions of the continent as a whole, and negative impacts on countries which are

economically and politically stable (such as Botswana). All reasons for

homogenization are not pernicious however, indeed the collective GDP of Africa is

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around two trillion dollars (PPP adjusted), which is larger than India’s, but leaves it trailing behind Brazil. Comparing African statistics to other large economies lends it credence that wouldn’t be available otherwise (for example: Kenya’s GDP is merely

2% of India’s). As the Attractiveness Survey states, “Regional integration is critical to accelerated and sustainable growth. Creating larger markets with greater critical mass will not only enhance the African investment proposition, it is also the only way for Africa to compete effectively in the global economy.”

There is more to this African story than just a shift away from economic stagnation. Hollman argues that, just as importantly, there is less military action, more awareness of human rights and an African renaissance of creativity and entrepreneurship. Indeed the overall trends are impressive. According to the World

Bank Africa Regional Brief, the proportion of children completing primary school in

Sub-Saharan Africa rose from 51% in 1991 to 64% in 2008. Sub-Saharan Africa has also seen Improvements in access to clean water (22% rise since 1990) and sanitation (16% rise since 1990). It has seen a 5% increase in life expectancy between 2000 and 2009 and, in what Michael Clemens of the Centre for Global

Development calls “the biggest, best story in development” Sub-Saharan Africa has reduced child mortality by 28% since 1990. This reduction is speeding up and infant mortality rates in most SSA countries are now falling twice as fast as during the early 2000s and 1990s (Economist, 2012).

Any discussion about Africa, no matter how optimistic, must be rooted in a realistic assessment of the current situation. One might point out that gains are

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tentative and liable to disappear, as they have in the past (for example: manufacturing in Kenya in the 70s evaporated over the following decades). Again, according to the World Bank, the average life expectancy at birth for Sub-Saharan

Africa rose to its highest level in 2010, yet remains a dismal 52.5 years, compared with 71.5 years for North Africa and 69.2 for the world. Prevalence of HIV has fallen over one percentage point over the past five years to below 6% (% of population between the ages of 15-49), yet the world average remains below 1%.

The fertility rates (births per woman in Sub-Saharan Africa decreased from 7 in 1980 to 5 in 2009, yet all other developing regions have seen fertility rates dip below 3.

Finally, we see that between 1990 and 1999 PPP GNI per capita growth in Sub-

Saharan Africa was 17% ($1,087 to $1,278). Between 2000 and 2009 it rose 58%

($1,298 to $2,060) and it continues its upward trajectory to $2,251 in 2011. Yet

Sub-Saharan Africa remains last amongst all developing regions, trailing slightly behind South Asia ($3,319), and substantially behind East Asia & Pacific ($10,405),

Middle East & North Africa ($10,865, 2010), and Latin America & Caribbean

($11,586).

B. Kenya

Sub Saharan Africa is, on the whole, experiencing a growth trajectory. Yet by narrowing the focus we can say more about the specifics during this recent period of economic growth—such as governance and democratization in Kenya—as well as specific development projects that are central to Kenya’s long term growth plans.

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First I present two graphs below (Figure 3: Emerging East Africa) showing export and import numbers for countries in East Africa (I include Ethiopia). These numbers tend to match well with the growth trajectory, though Rwanda and Burundi have smaller improvements. Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda make up the East Africa Community, the regional intergovernmental organization.

Regional integration is seen as a key component of strong economic growth and will be accomplished through a common EAC market.

Figure 3. Emerging East Africa

Imports of goods and services (BoP,

current US$) Kenya Imports 15000000000 Ethiopia Imports 10000000000 Tanzania Imports Uganda Imports 5000000000 Burundi Imports 0 Rwanda Imports

Imports,current US$

1978 1981 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 1975

Exports of goods and services (BoP, current US$)

Kenya Imports with Kenya imports comparison Kenya Exports Tanzania Exports 10000000000 Ethiopia Exports Uganda Exports 0 Rwanda Exports

Exports, currentUS$ Burundi Exports

1978 1981 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 1975

Source: World Bank

One note on the second graph is the continued trade imbalance within Kenya, with imports exceeding exports by over $4 billion (current US$) in 2010.

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We see that in the EAC there was strong growth in import and exports except in

Rwanda and Burundi. This strong growth was led by Kenya. Indeed the following graph (Figure 4: Kenya GDP) highlights the impressive rise in GDP for Kenya.

Figure 4. Kenya GDP

Kenya GDP, in billions (current US$)

1960-2010 40 32 20

0 GDP

GDP GDP billions in

1981 1963 1966 1969 1972 1975 1978 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008 1960

Source: World Bank

The picture for Kenya, however, is not as clear as GDP numbers would suggest.

Since achieving independence in 1963, Kenya has struggled to achieve consistent economic growth and democratic stability, though the last time Kenya saw negative growth rates was in 1992. Successful multi-party elections were held in 2002 and brought forth hope for the future with the election of Mwai Kibaki. The years between 2002 and 2007 were the most consistent growth period in Kenya’s history.

This hope and optimism was diminished in the post-election violence after the disputed 2007 election (held in December) between President Kibaki and the opposition leader, Raila Odinga. Yet even coupled with the worldwide economic

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downtown Kenya saw its economic numbers uptick starting in 2009. This is demonstrated in the following graphs (Figure 5: Growth patterns in Kenya).

Figure 5. Growth patterns in Kenya

Kenya GDP Growth (annual %) 1961-2010

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20 GDP Growth (annual %) %Change

0

1965 1969 1973 1977 1981 1985 1989 1993 1997 2001 2005 2009 -20 1961

Kenya International Tourism Receipts

in billions (current US$)

2 1.5 International 1 Tourism Receipts

Receipts,in billions 0.5 InternationalTourism 0 19951997199920012003200520072009

Source: World Bank

C. LAPSSET Corridor

In 2006 the Kenyan government, in collaboration with civil society organizations launched Vision 2030, Kenya’s long-term development agenda which is delineated in five year plans (the document can be obtained at http://www.vision2030.go.ke). It

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aims to create a newly industrializing, middle income country providing a high quality of life to all its citizens in a clean and secure environment. It consists of three pillars of action: Economic, Social and Political Governance. The construction of flagship infrastructure projects is envisioned to drive growth of 10% per annum and deliver Kenya into a middle income country by 2030. The largest of these infrastructure projects is the Lamu Port and New Transport Corridor Development to

Southern Sudan and Ethiopia, commonly referred to as LAPSSET (Lamu Port,

Southern Sudan, Ethiopia) Corridor.

The LAPSSET Corridor is considered critical to the success of Vision 2030 and part of a broader Trans-Africa infrastructure megaproject called The Great

Equatorial Land Bridge. The Land Bridge would connect Lamu, Kenya on the

Indian Ocean, through South Sudan and the Central African Republic, to Doula,

Cameroon on the Pacific. Its location is approximately halfway between the Suez

Canal and the port of Cape Town and the Kenya Railway Corporation estimates that it would reduce freight voyage time between origin and destination by two to three weeks as compared to the Suez or Cape route as the overland route would take approximately 3.5 days (The Great Equatorial Land Bridge, 2012)). The LAPSSET

Corridor would be the first segment of the route completed.

The idea for the Lamu Port is not recent. In 1972 the Kenyan Minister for

Transport & Communications, Ronald Ngala commissioned Renardet SA to undertake a viability study. Although the study was completed, the project was

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shelved indefinitely due to lack of government funds. It was reintroduced for inclusion in Vision 2030.

The 2012 Ernst & Young Attractiveness Survey for Africa identifies three components for unlocking Africa’s investment and economic potential: Accelerate regional integration. Eliminate the infrastructure deficit. Turn around perceptions in the international community. Indeed infrastructure development in Africa remains a key priority in the development field.

The LAPSSET Corridor is projected to become one of the largest infrastructure projects within Africa and is estimated to cost over 20 billion dollars

(I’ve seen estimates between 16 and 28 billion, with estimates steadily rising over time). This amount is equivalent to at least half of Kenya’s GDP (2011, 33 billion, current US$) making the impact of the LAPSSET Corridor, whether successful or a failure, a critical part of the economy.

The LAPSSET Corridor project involves the building of a megaport at Lamu, including construction of thirteen berths, an oil refinery and export processing zones.

It also includes construction of pipelines to the oil fields of South Sudan as well as to new finds in northern Kenya, and a railway line across northern Kenya connecting

Lamu to South Sudan and Ethiopia. The towns of Lamu, Isiolo and Lokichogio will also be designated as ‘resort cities’ and their airports upgraded to international standards. The feasibility study estimates that the town planned for mainland Lamu to support the port and the resort city will have 1 million residents by the year 2030.

The entire Lamu District currently has approximately 100,000 inhabitants.

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The GOK makes various statements about the goals and objectives of the corridor. I synthesize these below, followed by my thoughts on possible reasons for their inclusion:

o Foster transport linkages between Kenya, Southern Sudan and

Ethiopia and provide dependable access to the Indian Ocean.

Geopolitical interests play a key part in the construction of the port, as the landlocked countries of South Sudan and Ethiopia search for resolutions to their export/import difficulties. The tension between South Sudan and Sudan continues.

In January 2012, after Sudan attempted to charge $36 per barrel in oil transit fees— more than 10 times the international price—then seized South Sudanese oil worth

$800 million, South Sudan halted oil production. This has created a severe financial crisis within the fledgling nation as approximately 98% of government revenue comes from oil (Woolf, 2012). Although this conflict has been resolved, Kenya can offer an alternative route which is more politically acceptable for Southern Sudan than exporting oil through Khartoum. Meanwhile, Ethiopia is exploring additional ports outside of Djibouti–its main port—and Khartoum (reportedly including the ports of Berbara in Somaliland and Lasqoray in Puntland) to increase their trade portfolio.

o Promote economic development of the sub-region through enhanced

cross-border trade, as well as cultural exchange and integration.

As the newest nation in Africa, South Sudan has turned towards Kenya for support of their application to join the East African Community. Kenya also has a

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strong business presence in Juba and was the first East African nation to begin regional flights. Currently three Kenyan banks operate in South Sudan (Kenya

Commercial Bank, Equity Bank and CFC Stanbic, although CFC Stanbic only began operating in June, 2012). An article in the Africa Review (2012) stated that according to the Central Bank of Kenya’s 2011 Bank Supervision Report, profits for

Equity and KCB from South Sudan exceeded those from their banks in Tanzania and

Uganda. The article noted that forex trading was the main driver of profitability as

South Sudan relies heavily on imports as it begins rebuilding national infrastructure.

Ethiopia, meanwhile, has the seventh largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the third largest in the East Africa region behind Sudan and Kenya. In the past year

Kenya and Ethiopia have increased ties through signing of several bilateral agreements and close military cooperation in Somalia.

o Provide dynamic promotion of regional socio-economic development

along the transport corridor, especially in the underserved Northern,

Eastern and North-Eastern part of Kenya. Increase exploitation of

stranded natural resources, human resources, agricultural potential,

tourism potential and manufacturing potential in these areas.

According to the GOK website (http://www.northernkenya.go.ke), the Ministry of State for the Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands was created in 2008. This was in recognition of continued underdevelopment in Arid and Semi

Arid Lands (ASALs), which cover nearly 80% of Kenya’s land mass, nearly a third of its people, and approximately 70% of its livestock (See Appendix C-3 for map).

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Human development indices in the ASALs are the lowest in the country with the highest rates of poverty, even as approximately 90% of tourism revenue is collected from these areas. The route of the LAPSSET Corridor through Northern Kenya, which in colonial times was termed the Northern Frontier District (NFD), will provide much needed infrastructure and may unleash opportunities for development, including increasing livestock markets and export opportunities for the mainly pastoral communities who herd cattle, camels, goats and sheep. Perhaps more importantly, oil has recently been found in Turkana District of northern Kenya, while exploration for oils and minerals continues in several locations across northern

Kenya and off the coast in the Lamu basin.

o Reduce over-reliance on the Northern Corridor (Mombasa Port

through Nairobi, Kampala, and Kitale to Bujumbura, Burundi ).

Kenya currently utilizes Mombasa port for imports and exports. Mombasa port, however, is highly inefficient, plagued with corruption, and in need of large-scale infrastructure improvements, and importers and exporters have seen transport times and costs continue to rise. Therefore it has failed to act as a viable port for meeting the needs, not only of Kenya, but of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Southern Sudan.

It is argued that the LAPSSET corridor will not only fix the backlog at the port, but more effectively integrate Southern Sudan and Ethiopia into the East African regional economy.

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In an interview with The African Report (2012), Cyrus Njiru, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Transport, explained the importance of the LAPSSET

Corrider through historical comparison.

"The northern corridor was inaugurated by the completion of the Kenya-

Uganda railway in 1901," Njiru explains. "Ninety-one per cent of Kenya's GDP is now generated within a 100 kilometre radius of the railway. If the railway had not been built or had taken another route, modern Kenya would have been very different.

"Outside the corridor lies a geographical territory that constitutes over 75% of Kenya's land mass," he continues. "It contributes less than 10% to national GDP.

Why? Because the transport infrastructure has never been modernised." (Kantai,

2012)

In summary, the objectives of the LAPSSET Corridor focus on 1) enhancing

Kenya’s position as a gateway and transport hub to the broader Central and East

African region, opening up routes for further trade expansion, and 2) beginning to exploit the resources of northern Kenya, including oil, minerals, and livestock.

So far I have presented one side of a two sided coin. The takeaway is that Africa is emerging. Improvements are across the board and African development looks set to improve for the reasons stated above, and more. Yet Africa doesn’t develop in a vacuum and globalization has made ‘world development’ increasingly important.

Flip the coin over and Africa’s development faces the global problems of climate

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change and ecological degradation, volatile financial flows, and evolving trade and production patterns, to name a few.

The essence of this thesis is that Africa’s emerging future is coinciding with emerging problems of a global nature which increasingly challenge our notion of progress. If historically economic success has been the ideal ending, increasingly the development field is shifting towards a precautionary approach to development which challenges the sole focus on macroeconomic development. Instead, sustainable development attempts to balance environmental, social, cultural and economic interests. This balancing also reflects various landscapes, from local to global, which are reflected in the addition of critical stakeholders outside of the government.

In this chapter I made the case for an emerging Africa, and an emerging

Kenya. Yet as we move towards the local level one must leave the macroeconomic focus behind. Indeed an article in the Economist (April 2012) highlights a major conundrum that the local communities which will be affected by the LAPSSET

Corridor are facing. The first problem in Africa, they wrote, is governance and corruption. The second problem is lack of infrastructure.

Local communities have more interests than just economics and play an important role in the process of development and the resulting outcomes. To understand the process of development one must engage with the local stakeholders.

My time in Lamu, Kenya allowed me to do so. In Chapter Three I argue that understanding the process of development, which involves reflexivity as a central

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element, helps us explore the complexities and intersections. Knowing the interests of stakeholders and how they intersect helps point us towards how these interests may be balanced. The result is a precautionary approach to development which leads to sustainable development.

Chapter III Exploring Reflexivity in Lamu

A. Lamu

When I first arrived in Lamu in August 2011, I spent days meandering along the waterfront of Old Town Lamu. Crowded row of simple motorboats, many painted in bright colors, rocked gently beside the concrete seawall, their captains sipping chai in the shade of seafront restaurants. High speed motorboats roared across the channel that runs between Lamu and Manda islands with groups of tourists from the

Manda airport. Traditional wooden dhows, there single white sails tied loosely to the masts, bobbed gently in the waves. Boys in underwear dove off the bows of the dhows and swam in the murky water. Donkeys laden with blocks of rock or mangrove poles, used for constructing new homes, were driven on by young men.

Economically, Lamu seemed to be bustling. Three airlines, their offices on the seafront, offered direct flights to Nairobi or various game parks across the country. A line of customers queued at one of the three ATM machines. Money changed hands constantly at the dozens of M-pesa mobile money stations spread across the island.

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To be clear on the geography, Lamu Island lies off the northern coast of

Kenya in the Indian Ocean. It is part of the Lamu archipelago, approximately 14 islands which lie north of Lamu Island. The most northern island of Kiwayu lies only 10 kilometers from the Somali border. Lamu District is one of seven districts which make up Coast Province (though these designations will change after the 2013 election in accordance with the new constitution—districts will become counties, comparable to US states—and provinces will be removed). Lamu District consists of the islands along with a strip of coastal land with a total size of 6,167 km.

According to the Kenya Open Data Initiative, in 2009 Lamu District had a population of 101,539 with 80% of the population living in rural areas

As any tourist website will tell you, there is something “magical” about

Lamu, Kenya. It is a blend of old and new, of deep cultural ties and modern conveniences. A typical example: Bakary, one of the local Imams, bakes pizzas and pastries in large ovens at his bakery which opens and closes according to the call to prayer.

Old Town Lamu is a UNESCO World Heritage site, one of 250 cities around the globe with such designations. It is renowned for its traditional homes built with corral walls, historical importance as a center of international commerce, and as a center for the study of Islamic and Swahili. Old Town Lamu was designated as a

National Monument in 1983 by the Kenyan government. The National Museums of

Kenya, published the “Lamu Conservation Plan” in 1986. The philosophical approach of the plan was that “conservation is not antithetical to progress, but that by

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rooting development in the past it is possible to provide direction and a firm base for the future”.

Working through the National Museums of Kenya, the government submitted the proposal for World Heritage status of Old Town Lamu which was approved in

2001. UNESCO has extremely limited funds for preservation, instead relying on the national government to support local and national efforts of preservation.

Besides historical and cultural significance, the Lamu islands have important marine ecosystems. In 1980 UNESCO named Kiunja (an area near the northern most islands and along the coast) a Man and Biosphere Reserve. The islands also provide nesting areas for sea turtles while coral reefs and mangroves provide for artisanal fishing. Dugongs, sharks and large marine species are also common.

Understanding a place is important in understanding its organizations. A brief history of Lamu (and its context within the broader Swahili civilization) is important in understanding the interests and underlying arguments made by the Lamu community. Although there is relatively little known about the origins of Lamu town, Randall Pouwels (1978, 1991, 1993) argues that a rather cohesive narrative can be formed.

Thomas Spear (2000) notes that while coastal trading was conducted from early in the first millennia along the East African coast, it was not until the 8th to 11th century that permanent Swahili settlements were built. In the Lamu archipelago, which Spear argues is likely the epicenter of the Swahili maritime civilization, the

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towns of Pate, Manda and Shanga were the earliest settlements. Archeological records from Shanga show that trade occurred with the Persian Gulf by the late 8th century and Muslim burials by AD 850.

Lamu Town was permanently settled during the 12th century. Like most

Swahili towns it emerged in successive stages and likely was an expansion of a small fishing village. From the 11th to 13th centuries there was an expansion of Islamic influence and trade. The formation of Lamu was not the subjugation of Africans and the supremacy of Arabs however, but rather a gradual mixing of traditions (including

Islam) and peoples, due to increased maritime trade and occasional conquest

(Pouwel, 1978).

By the fifteenth century there were nearly 40 city-states along the coast of

East Africa, running from Mogadishu in Somalia to Solofa in Mozambique. These included Lamu, Pate, Faza, and Siyu within the Lamu archipelago. There was remarkable likeness in architecture and construction as well as Swahili culture and language (which although borrowing certain words from Arabic, remained a linguistically pure African language) (Spear 2000). Although these city-states remained autonomous (and were often in conflict), they formed a symbiotic whole widely regarded as Swahili civilization. Not only were these city-states part of

Swahili civilization, but Spear argues that they should also be understood as part of a vast Islamic trade network that ran from East Africa across the globe to Malay.

The apex of Swahili civilization was from 1300-1600. As Vasco de Gama wrote in 1498 upon meeting the ruler of Malindi (a mainland town south of Lamu):

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"The king wore a robe of damask trimmed with green satin, and a rich turban.

He was seated on two cushioned chairs of bronze, beneath a round sunshade of crimson satin attached to a pole. An old man, who attended him as a page, carried a short sword in a silver sheath. There were many musicians…two trumpets of ivory, richly carved, and of the size of a man, were blown from a hole in the side, and made sweet harmony" (BBC).

During the 1500s the Portuguese tried to wrest away control of trade in East

Africa, thus beginning the gradual decline of Swahili civilization. Although the

Portuguese were able to conquer and control key city-states such as Solofa and

Mombasa, their long-term influence was limited. In 1729 the Sultan of Oman defeated the Portuguese in Mombasa and drove them out of East Africa. Soon after, he began consolidating power by colonizing the large city-state of Kilwa and the southern coast of Tanzania (Pouwel 1993).

Lamu remained largely untouched by these events, yet it was in a constant state of contest and war with its neighboring city-states, especially Pate. As Pouwel notes, a pivotal moment in Lamu’s history (and Kenya’s) occurred in the early 1800s when Lamu fought a battle in the small village of Shela (two km outside of Lamu town) against Pate and Mombasa. Although they won a decisive victory, the power of the two larger city-states forced Lamu to form an alliance with the Sultan of

Oman (Sayyid Said) to prevent retaliation. Soon after the victory, construction of the Lamu Fort began in cooperation with Sayyid Said. When it was completed it housed a permanent garrison of Omani soldiers. Within a decade Sayyid Said had

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utilized his foothold in Lamu to gain control of Pate and Mombasa. Thus the politics of alliance making between city-states resulted in Oman, followed by British, colonization of the coast (ibid).

In 1895 the Sultan of Zanzibar (The Omani Sultancy had been separated by two brothers) signed a treaty with Britain that left a ten mile strip of the coast as a

British Protectorate. As James Brennan (2008) notes, the coast remained separate from the Kenya Colony and was thus able to maintain cultural practices such as sharia law as well as local control by elites of lands and resources. Outwardly, between the treaty of 1895 and Kenya’s independence in 1963, little changed in

Lamu. Perhaps the most visible change in Lamu was the building of a seawall along the town waterfront by British prisoners of war from 1914-1918 (Hoyle 2001).

In Mombasa, the dhow port was refurbished and then expanded into a modern port and a railway line constructed to Nairobi and Kampala, making it the epicenter of trade. Economically Lamu weakened during this time period and its population declined as men emigrated to find wage labor, often in Mombasa

(Romero, 1986). It remained, however, an important maritime center.

From 1953 to 1963 residents of the coast engaged in the Mwambao movement, pursuing nationhood independent of the rest of Kenya. They feared being dominated by upcountry (mainland) Kenyans such as the Kikuyu who were taking control of the government. The Mwambao movement failed and on

December 12th 1963 the coast joined Kenya in independence (Brennan 2008).

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Soon after, the government of Jomo Kenyatta declared that all lands on the coast without title deeds were government lands and began distributing plots based on a corrupt system of political patronage, often to upcountry elites. To this day over 80% of coast residents are considered squatters on their ancestral lands.

In 2008 a group known as the Mombasa Republican Council rose in popularity with their slogan, Pwani si Kenya (the Coast is not Kenya) and calls for a secessionist movement, mainly in response to the land issue (IRIN, 2012).

In the fall of 2011 the Kenyan government announced that they would be breaking ground on the multibillion dollar LAPSSET Corridor on the mainland 10 kilometers north of Lamu Island with the construction of the Lamu port. The port entry would run between the islands of Manda and Pate, passing by the small island of Manda

Mtoto and a patch of coral reef that sat in the middle of the channel.

I decided to make my way to Manda Mtoto, boarding a traditional dhow boat that had been outfitted with an outboard motor. My guide sat across from me and kept up a constant narrative as we chugged slowly around Manda Island. He explained how the government dredged the channel between Manda Island and the mainland every few years, a project that had been ongoing for nearly ten years. This had been a boon for Lamu, as previously the channel was impassable during the dry season and boats were forced to pass on the ocean side, a longer and more arduous journey.

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He pointed out where elephants used to pass from the mainland onto the island (though while I was in Lamu a group of cape buffalo did cross from the mainland onto Lamu island, to the delight of the tourists and consternation of the local population). The dredging of the channel killed off corals and mangroves.

Local NGOs had attempted to plant new mangroves, though this was only mildly successful. The north side of Manda opened up into a wide channel, the area of the

Lamu port on the mainland a speck far to our left, the channel narrowing at the entry point between Manda and Pate Islands. The water glimmered turquoise as we turned off the motor and hoisted the sail, sailing past the white sands of Manda Toto which lie in the channel entry. We dropped anchor at the coral reef near the center of the channel entry.

There was a small canoe with two men fishing as I snorkeled. I spent the afternoon on the beach of Manda Mtota as the crew member’s fried whole fish which they had caught in the reef and boiled coconut rice. I was quickly coming to understand why foreign tourists and those Europeans and Americans who owned houses on Lamu and Manda were loath to see the project develop. This was exotic bliss, and at quite an affordable price.

Yet what about the residents of Lamu? How would the LAPSSET Corridor affect them? Were they in favor of the Lamu port and the LAPSSET Corridor, or opposed? My research suggests that local life was not seen as an idealized utopia, but rather as pragmatic attempts to navigate the complexities of modern life while

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maintaining key cultural ingredients. In short, the residents of Lamu are reflexively modern.

A middle-aged silversmith who sold rings to Jude Law (he showed me the autograph as ‘proof’) demonstrated this as we drank Turkish coffee in his woodworking shop.

Let them build the port he explained to me. The youth were growing up in a world different than the world he knew. Each person needed to choose the lifestyle they wanted. They could choose to move to the mainland and work at the port.

Lamu, however, should remain a place where traditions continue. The youth who forgot the traditions needed to know that there was a place they could return to.

In his mind the Lamu port and Lamu were not contradictions, but rather could coexist, creating an interplay of tradition and modernity. During my time in

Lamu, although each individual had their own take on the Lamu port, this was the most common perception I got from talking to people on the streets. The soul of

Lamu was in its boats and the water. A new, modern port fit in with this image, so long as the traditional dhows and the artisanal fishing could continue.

B. Save Lamu

In 2009, LEPAC (Lamu Environment Protection and Conservation group), a community-based organization, was formed in response to the proposed LAPSSET

Corridor. Although Vision 2030 was released to the general public, I was told that the local community had not been consulted in its creation and details about the

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project were unknown except for occasional articles in the newspapers. In collaboration with Natural Justice, a South African NGO focused on legal issues,

LEPAC proposed working with the local communities to create bio-cultural community protocols (BCPs). These community protocols are legal instruments that seek to address the lack of community involvement in the development and implementation of laws and policies that affect their communally managed lands, resources, and ways of life.

To accomplish this, LEPAC began bringing together a broad coalition of affiliated civil society actors. These included Nairobi based NGOs, community- based organizations (CBOs) from within Lamu Distrct as well as representatives from the local Boni, Orma, Sanye, Swahili and Bajuni ethnic communities.

Over the first half of 2011, as the LAPSSET Corridor began moving from idea to implementation phase, this coalition was renamed Save Lamu. I chose Save

Lamu as the focus of my research as they were purporting to speak on behalf of all the communities in Lamu (both those on the islands and on the mainland). Although the catalyst for the formation of Save Lamu was the government’s proposal to construct the LAPSSET Corridor, my contacts within Save Lamu, Hadija Ernst and

Samia Omar, pointed out that Lamu already had many problems including the lack of land rights for locals, as well as a rise in drug usage among the youth. These problems would just be exacerbated by the project. “Save Lamu can address the problems and historical injustices that Lamu has been fighting,” Hadija said. I would hear this term, historical injustices, often while in Lamu.

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I joined Samia for lunch at the Seafront Café on Lamu Island. Samia sat across from me dressed in a simple but elegant black buibui, her hair wrapped in a loose black headscarf with silver sequins. She was young and ambitious. She also seemed nervous. I ordered the red snapper (caught by local fishermen the waiter assured me), coconut rice and a mango juice. “No one knows the impact on local fisherman,” Samia said. “But many of the fish live in the mangroves which will be removed or destroyed when they dredge for the Lamu port. When they dredge they will remove the coral reefs and destroy the island of Manda Mtoto.” This information seemed to go against the local ideal, the coexistence of a modern port and the continuation of traditions. What then was Save Lamu’s stance on construction of the LAPSSET Corridor?

In my meetings with Samia I learned that Save Lamu was not opposed to construction of the Lamu port, per se. Indeed Samia’s claims about the destruction of Manda Mtoto were never made publicly by Save

Lamu. Instead Save Lamu was focused on governance issues: lack of consultation between the Lamu community and the government (which failed to include the local community in any discussions on the port); lack of transparency by the government (which refused to release information pertaining to the LAPSSET Corridor); corruption, including land grabbing around the construction area by elites; and questions of sustainability, including preservation of the environment and culture of Lamu.

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When I first arrived in Lamu the lack of economic engagement surprised me. There is a broad critique that can be made about the economics of the LAPSSET Corridor: of the increased commodities focus; on the import/export questions; about the scale of the port; and about improving current infrastructure, including the Mombasa port, to name but a few.

Samia’s explanation pointed towards an underlying challenge inherent in the organization of Save Lamu. Save Lamu was supposed to be representative of the community, and made decisions based on consensus amongst members. My own reflections suggest that the reason for the ‘per se’ is that agreement could not be reached on whether the port would be beneficial to Lamu, nor on how to actually address the broader LAPSSET Corridor. Indeed when I asked Hadija about why

Save Lamu did not oppose the port she responded that it was a matter of staying relevant. She felt that if Save Lamu opposed the port then the government would ignore them and build the port anyways.

Another example of the challenge of agreement arose when the national

NGO MUHURI (Muslims for Human Rights) informed Save Lamu that they would purchase an advertisement in the national newspapers on behalf of Save Lamu.

Several organizations within Save Lamu complained that past experience led them to believe that MUHURI would co-opt Save Lamu for their own benefit and refused to allow Save Lamu to partner with MUHURI, threatening to leave Save Lamu if they were accepted as partners.

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It is important to note here that information about the internal discussions and debates of Save Lamu were filtered through Hadija and Samia as I was not permitted to attend Save Lamu meetings. Although I will never know the exact reasons for this exclusion I suspect one part was that Hadija, especially, was extremely interested in presenting Save Lamu as a cohesive whole, without divisions, while

Hadija was also, if not secretive, very concerned about keeping the internal plans and debates of Save Lamu private. Although never fully stated, I always understood that keeping information from the government was a way to assert some power over the situation; a counter to the government’s own secrecy. It was more often Samia that would offer me insights, including the MUHURI debate, which showed a more diverse and occasionally divided organization.

Although, as the MUHURI example demonstrates, division and disagreement could be an important part of consensus-based decision making, the members of

Save Lamu were able to hold the coalition together. An illustrative example of why this occurred came about after I had a short conversation with a Kikuyu man from central Kenya who worked in government administration in Lamu. The Kikuyu are the dominant political tribe within Kenya. When I told him that I was researching

Save Lamu and their response to the LAPSSET Corridor he began laughing and told me that the people of Lamu wouldn’t ever come together. They’re not like the

Kikuyu, he said, as if that would tell me all I needed to know about Save Lamu.

When I related this incident to Hadija she responded angrily, “Of course we are not

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like the Kikuyu. We are talking about a history of rival city-states. But for the

Lamu port we will come together.”

The history of the Lamu archipelago seems to be important as part of the cultural mélange and identity of Lamu. It remains unclear to me, however, what the historical influence is within Save Lamu in terms of forming agreements between the diverse local actors.

The goals and objectives of Save Lamu are driven by what can be agreed upon amongst the members. The objectives of Save Lamu, as identified on their website

(savelamu.org) are:

 Raise awareness on the environmental, social, and political challenges facing the peoples and environs of Lamu.  Document and raise awareness on community knowledge, practices and rights over communally managed lands.  Foster sustainable and responsible development and use of natural resources.  Preserve the cultural and social identity of the marginalized indigenous communities in Lamu.  Advocate and lobby for the recognition of the communities natural resource rights.  Build capacity for the local community in natural resource rights advocacy.

These objectives are clearly driven by the long-term bio-cultural community protocols (BCPs) and fail to address directly the construction of

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the LAPSSET Corridor. Hadija suggested that this is a strategic move to make Save Lamu representative of the people and the issues affecting them, which includes, but is not limited to, the LAPSSET Corridor, though as noted above, an unsaid reason is likely lack of agreement on how to adequately address the LAPSSET Corridor.

Indeed Samia often wondered how Save Lamu could slow the frenetic pace at which the government was pushing forward. This was a key challenge of fulfilling Save Lamu’s objectives. “Everything’s happening faster than we expected,” Samia told me. “We have a long-term plan, but what we need is a short- term plan.”

Kenya’s President, Mwai Kibaki, was relentlessly pushing the LAPSSET

Corridor forward. He wanted to have the first phase of the Lamu Port completed before his term expired in 2013. His legacy was tainted by the post-election violence of 2007. What he needed was progress towards a new future that he could point to for his legacy. Ex-President Moi, a dictator who ruled for over 20 years was widely seen as a benefactor of Democracy when he retired in 2002 and allowed national elections to be held. Redemption was possible.

Vision 2030 calls for growth rates of 10% per year, a rate the government contends can only be achieved with construction of the

LAPSSET Corridor. Although Vision 2030 includes socio-political goals, these are subsumed by the economics.

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Much as Nair noted in India some fifty years before, the objectives of

Save Lamu focus on the environmental, social, cultural and political components of development, with an acceptance of economic development only if it allows continuation of specific traditional ways of being.

It is not only through Save Lamu’s objectives that social and political development might be achieved, but rather the formation of Save Lamu is itself social and political development. As Save Lamu engages in coalition and capacity building, in mobilizing the community and engaging the government it is providing development.

The learning that results from this formation and engagement allows for agreement and collective action. There are, however, also external factors which influence learning and development. When I had lunch with

Samia at the Seafront Café, she couldn’t realize that within two months Lamu would be transformed by the kidnapping and death of two tourists by Somali pirates (discussed further in Chapter Three). These events brought a new focus on security issues and decimated the tourist industry, driving the local economy to its knees. Indeed my dhow trip to Manda Mtoto was the last time I took a boat trip across the islands due to security concerns. The economics of the port became an important part of the discussion as the port promised 90,000 new jobs. Soon after, MUHURI became an official partner of Save Lamu.

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My interactions and experience in Lamu point towards reflexivity both within individuals and the Save Lamu coalition. There is an awareness and understanding of Lamu’s place in society (both in Kenya, where it is in recent history weak, and globally, where it is stronger with its UNESCO designation).

There is also awareness within Save Lamu of the roles of their members and their representation on behalf of the community.

As noted above, local communities have more interests than just economics and play an important role in the process of development. Over the course of a few short months I witnessed how the views of Save Lamu evolved to meet changing circumstances. Save Lamu had undergone learning and this learning shifted their process. This reflexivity gave me a greater appreciation of the both the challenges and the opportunities that the development of the LAPSSET Corridor presented as

Save Lamu engaged in social and political development.

C. The Process of Development

Understanding the process of development, which involves reflexivity as a central element, helps us explore how the interests of the stakeholders intersect and points us towards balancing interests.

My time in Lamu showed how, when viewed as part of an unfolding process of development, pre-defined development outcomes lose importance; act only as a guiding bridge for action and negotiation. Save Lamu was more concerned with:

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Did the government listen to our demands? How can we gather more political and financial support? What should be our next step?

Reflexivity helps propel a project forward. The project is pushed forward by friction points between the various actors, the points where reflexivity and learning are most relevant. These friction points become the modification of the final outcome. By tracking these friction points over time, reflexivity guides us in how a balance of interests might be achieved.

In this section I explore how the process of development unfolded in Lamu, in relation to Save Lamu and the Kenyan government.

The first stages in the process of development have been noted previously, mainly the creation of Kenya’s Vision 2030 by the government in consultation with

IGOs and national development think tanks. Specific development outcomes and projects were determined. This included the LAPSSET Corridor as the largest project. Local consultation was excluded and LEPAC formed nearly two years later in response to increased discussions about the LAPSSET Corridors potential implementation.

The next stage involved LEPAC collaborating with the South African NGO,

Natural Justice. Because of LEPAC’s relationship with Natural Justice and the proposal of conducting BCPs (bio-cultural community protocols) LEPAC began forming a local coalition of CBOs. These relationships gave the Lamu community a long-term plan for self-empowerment and resource management. According to

Hadija Ernst, as the Kenyan government began pursuing the construction of the port

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in earnest, LEPAC and the coalition needed an organization that would present a more cohesive front with LEPAC taking the lead on the BCPs, but relinquishing broader control of the group. This came about as other CBOs began to push for their voices to be heard.

The Save Lamu coalition was formed to speak on behalf of the entire community and lead this effort. Representatives from each CBO as well as the major ethnic communities formed the coalition. There is a smaller executive committee that discusses which issues should be presented to the coalition. These decisions are then made on a consensus basis. Samia complained that there were too many communities that were not represented by CBOs, but only by an individual.

When I asked Hadija about this she dismissed it summarily, as she was wont to do, and told me that everyone was well represented in Save Lamu.

While LEPAC was building its coalition, the Kenyan government began reaching out to global actors for funding and implementation of the project. In 2010 they signed an agreement with Japan Port Authorities (JPA) to perform the feasibility study.

The Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, visited Lamu on July 23, 2011 where he gave a speech praising the port and talked about how the port would bring great benefits. He refused to answer questions from the local community or discuss how

Lamuans (the people of Lamu) might be negatively affected. According to meeting notes from a July 28th meeting by Save Lamu, the visit spurred Save Lamu into

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action as the local community clearly saw that consultation or consideration of Lamu were not a part of the government’s plan for the LAPSSET Corridor.

Indeed, to further aggravate Save Lamu the feasibility study, a document that guides the outcome of the port, was charged with corruption. The Parliamentary committee on Transport, Public Work and Housing charged irregularities in the tendering process and the contract sum. To date, the government has not released the feasibility study. Save Lamu was passed a draft copy of the feasibility study (I don’t know who the source was). Although it is an important document, while I was there Save Lamu didn’t seem to know what to do with it and I rarely heard it discussed except as another piece of information that the government kept hidden from the public.

Save Lamu also asked about the environmental impact assessment (EIA) that the law requires be conducted before construction could begin. I met a PhD student from Britain who was working with the Kenya Marine Research Institute measuring the biomass of mangroves for use in carbon emission trading schemes. She told me she had a copy of an EAI for the Lamu Port that KMRI had performed, but she declined to pass it on to me or Save Lamu. She emailed Hadija and told her that like all their reports, it was very short on substance.

Save Lamu was busy making plans. A proposal for the BCPs had been completed and Save Lamu was raising funds to begin sensitizing communities.

There were discussions on developing a local radio station and hosting a symposium to bring in researchers to highlight the history and resource management of the Lamu

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archipelago. There was also a fisheries and resource use mapping project, drafting of a legal petition, and numerous letter writing campaigns to politicians. A memorandum was presented to the members of the Parliamentary Committee for

Lands and Natural Resources at a raucous meeting held at the Lamu Fort on August

22nd, (in which the police had to be called in as the crowd was becoming increasingly heated). The members had come to Lamu to enquire about the state of title deeds for indigenous communities and the general state of historical land injustice. Although the meeting was held in Kiswahili so that I could not fully follow the conversations, it was the mood of the meeting that gave a sense to the increasing tension and hostility of the local population to the government.

In response to the meeting, the Minister of Lands, James Orengo, came to the towns of Faza and Mokowe in Lamu on Septmber 11th. He distributed title deeds to residents who had previously had their lands surveyed by the government and according to Hadija promised to distribute title deeds before the port was constructed to those whose lands had been surveyed. This would do little to stem the land issues as only a few select farms had been surveyed. Save Lamu held its first protest a few days later on September 14th, carrying banners which read, “Twataka Port, lakini, tuhusishwe” (We want a port, but, with consultation).

Although the LAPSSET Corridor was the focus of discussions I had with

Hadija and Samia, everything changed on October 1st. A month earlier a British man had been killed and his wife taken hostage by Somali pirates on the island of

Kiwayu, the northernmost island closest to Somalia (she was released in March,

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2012). It was a tragic story, yet the impact on Lamu seemed negligible and Hadija and Samia promised that nothing like this could happen again. But on the morning of October 1st Somali pirates struck again, this time across the channel from Old

Town Lamu on Manda Island. I awoke early in the morning to an unusually loud commotion in the channel, but soon fell back asleep. Around nine I made my way to

Hadija’s office, located above the Bustani Café which she owned. I sat with Hadija and Samia as they worked their phones. “Is this war?” Hadija asked as she paced back and forth, chain smoking. The pirates had entered in the middle of the night and kidnapped a Frenchwoman, Marie Dedieu, who was elderly, sick from cancer and confined to a wheelchair (she died while in captivity). She had arrived the night before and Samia and Hadija told me that it must have been an inside job.

One of the owners of a tourist hotel was in a private plane following the pirates, so at least amongst the local elite there was knowledge about the kidnapping as it unfolded. Hadija and Samia would get information and then call and pass the information on.

It is clear that the Kenyan police and Navy were less informed. Indeed it took nearly three hours to rouse the police and begin pursuit. Hadija claimed emphatically that the local police force consisted mainly of upcountry Kikuyu members, who in general were unfamiliar with boating and inexperienced in navigating boats in the ocean, an admission the government would soon make when questioned how the pirates made it all the way to Somalia.

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The tranquility that had reigned over Lamu disappeared as Army helicopters flew overhead. The Kenyan government claimed that the culprits were al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda connected Islamic movement in Somalia. All the locals spoke of

Somali pirates and scoffed at the government’s assertion of al-Shabaab, claiming it was just politics. Partly this was Lamu’s own perception of its moderate Islam, which the locals seemed to think was tarnished when acquainted with the extremism of al-Shabaab. Indeed Samia often expressed Lamu as a counter to al-Shabaab and al-Queda.

A week later Tourism Minister Najib Balala and Police Commissioner

Mathew Iteere came to Lamu and held a private meeting with hoteliers, along with the press. Only after pressure from Samia, who told me she forced her way into the meeting, did they make brief statements to the public on the steps of the Lamu fort.

They promised to ensure security for Lamu without providing any details.

There were many reasons for Kenya to invade Somalia, including terrorism, piracy, oil and refugees (too many reasons to address properly in this thesis), and on

October 16th the Kenyan military began fighting its first external war in Kenya’s history.

Soon after, I began hearing conspiracy theories that the government had conspired in the kidnappings so they could invade Somalia and ensure that the port could operate effectively. Others suggested that the reason for the kidnappings was to destroy the local economy so that they would have to accept the port and its jobs.

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Although these were said without conviction, they held nuggets of truth. The

Lamu port would not be feasible if it had to deal constantly with Somali pirates accosting ships, while the decline in tourism crippled the local economy. This was coupled with a rise in national inflation to a high of 19.7% in November 2011

(World Bank data). The jobs issue—the government was promising 90,000 new jobs in Lamu District due to the LAPSSET Corridor—rose to the top of discussion and debate.

There were clear impacts from the kidnapping that shifted the concerns and interests of Save Lamu; though these shifts appeared to be short term (there was, however, a significant shift towards wondering how to provide more stable employment over the long term). With the invasion of Somalia the Kenyan government again began pressing forward on the LAPSSET Corridor.

This was a new stage in the development process; the rise of the unknown and unexpected which affected the interests of the stakeholders. Indeed Kenya is in transition to a new stage. Recent oil finds in northern Kenya promote the corridor.

Election politics and promulgation of a new constitution and land bill (which come into full effect in 2013) ensure uncertainty over land issues and rights of the local community. The judiciary has also been strengthened and standards for serving on the bench improved. South Sudan and Sudan’s relationship ebbs and flows, leading to uncertainty about oil exportation. All of these, and more, will impact the

LAPSSET Corridor.

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Conclusion. Developing a Reflexive Framework for Sustainable

Development

Sustainable development increasingly replaces the idea of progress as the model of human advancement as society moves from progress to risk, recognizing that development affects different actors in diverse way. We must always ask: whose benefit? Whose loss? In the case of the LAPSSET Corridor we ask, what is the environmental, social, cultural and economic effect on local fisherman, Old

Town Lamu, Kenya, East Africa, corporations, the global population, etc.?

What are the trade-offs locally, globally? For example, the global politics of climate change may point towards economic benefit and climate change mitigation as the path forward for developing countries. Indeed, how can we condemn ecological destruction from large scale infrastructure projects in developing countries when the Alberta Tar Sands and Keystone Pipeline advance within North

America, thus increasing the likelihood that mitigation measures will be needed?

The rise of global problems increasingly obscures a definitive path forward.

In the case of large scale projects determining outcomes and effects is difficult, especially at the local level; it depends on a multitude of factors which vary by location and change by the moment. I argue that understanding the process of development, which involves reflexivity as a central element, helps us explore the complexities and intersections. Knowing the interests of stakeholders and how they intersect helps point us towards how these interests may be balanced. The result is a precautionary approach to development which leads to sustainable development.

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To better understand the process of development I suggest a reflexive framework as listed in the table below. I focus on large-scale projects as these reflect the broad trends of negotiation that are occurring and were evident in my experience with the LAPSSET Corridor. As an example, I synthesize the LAPSSET

Corridor development in the third column.

Six Stages of Large-Scale Development Stage Description LAPSSET Corridor Stage 1 Government, in consultation with one Vision 2030 created by the segment of development field, government in consultation with proposes project for national benefit. IGOs and national development think tanks. Specific outcomes, including LAPSSET Corridor, determined. Local consultation is left out. Stage 2 Local community counters project on Local community learns of behalf of local benefit. LAPSSET Corridor, attempts to engage with government to influence project. Save Lamu is formed to lead this effort. Stage 3 Building of coalitions and capacity building (this remains ongoing throughout the process as stakeholders attempt to strengthen their positions). 3-A Local community partners with another Numerous NGOs and individuals, segment of development field to both national and international, influence project. These actors partner with Save Lamu to influence participate based on their own diverse project. Save Lamu begins Bio- interests (of local, national and global Cultural Protocal process with concern). Natural Justice, a South African NGO. 3-B Government interacts with global Kenyan government reaches out to actors (private sector, IGOs, private global actors (for funding and and public funders—including other implementation). These actors governments) to implement project. engage with government directly to These actors negotiate project details influence project for their benefit. for their benefit. Japan Port Consultants perform feasibility study, but are charged with corruption by Parliament. Government refuses to release feasibility study. Stage 4 Friction points are clarified between Save Lamu demands information, local community and government. including EIA and feasibility study,

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These friction points are negotiated, as well as consultation. Government ignored or coopted by government. ignores Save Lamu demands. Save New friction points arise as process Lamu marches in protest. unfolds, while others fade or are clarified. Stage 5 External factors influence project in Kidnapping decimates local diverse and unexpected ways. economy. Kenyan invasion of Somalia brings rash of bombings across Kenya. Relationship between Sudan and South Sudan evaporates, enhancing prospect of project. Stage 6 Project is negotiated, challenged and Project moves forward as proposed. promoted at multiple levels. Project is Kenyan government approaches adjusted accordingly. This process multiple funders and businesses to continues until project is complete, begin implementation of Corridor. exogenous influence is removed or ad Government commits to building infinitum. first three primary berths at the Lamu Port. Save Lamu files legal injunction to help clarify legal rights due to new constitution. Legal petition includes lack of Environmental Impact Assessment before construction starts.

The Six Stages of Large-Scale Development framework leads to sustainable development only if there is a balancing of interests for the common good. I find that reflexivity points us towards balancing these interests in multiple ways. First, as the development field becomes more reflexive, the result has been the inclusion of more stakeholders with increasingly varied interests. Secondly, reflexivity in development involves utilizing knowledge and learning. This creates a feedback loop which results in development (as evidenced by the social and political development that arose with the formation of Save Lamu). It also allows for actors to adapt to evolving circumstances within the process of development. Finally, reflexivity of the actors becomes important in defining interests. Alternative interests become the points of friction between stakeholders. These friction points

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act as points in the process of development where the outcome is negotiated and modified.

The benefits of using reflexivity as a tool for understanding development thus include the resulting Six Stages of Large-Scale Development. Providing a broad reflexive framework helps provide researchers insight into how their work fits into the overall process. Although each stage has specific research (for example, the relationship between local and transnational actors—stage 2), the process of development points to potentially important intersection points—e.g. timing matters—as well as critical roles—e.g. helping identify alternative interests which can create friction points. There is also value in identifying not only the various stages of development, but how reflexivity helps drive the process forward.

Further research can explore crucial stages of this process that I’ve identified.

Future research on stages 2 and 5 involving exogenous shocks—considering a large scale project as a shock to the local community—can explore when and how exogenous shocks shift development. Also, future research can determine how social and political organizations form when these shocks occur. Future research on

Stage 4 can highlight how local organizations shape social and political development outside of economic development and overcome the tactical difficulties of addressing these different values. Finally future research can identify organizations which fall apart and fail, and the reasons for the failure, as well as consequences for development.

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In the Introduction I asked whether reflexivity in development can lead towards a more sustainable future. The answer is that reflexivity helps guides us towards a more sustainable future, yet there are challenges.

The reflexivity of the development field is driven by researchers who are self-reflexive, have the benefit of intellectual resources and wealth, and have the power that comes from these benefits. What happens when these resources are lacking? What does reflexivity tell us about achieving a balance of interests when there are multiple asymmetries between actors, especially at the local and national level?

Arnaldo Bagnasco (2004 p. 74) suggests that, “We find reflexivity is similar to language as cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). Where most people are literate, those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds possess a greater ability to use language ‘correctly’ in various contexts. So like language, we all have reflexivity and use it, but some can do it ‘better’ than others due to the access or ownership of more resources.”

Although we can track the process of development through the actors’ reflexivity and hence ability to learn; to influence outcomes, reflexivity and collective learning must be turned into collective action. As Pieterse (2009) suggests, governments don’t give up power and privilege because of learning and reflexivity. They do so only under collective action. Thus reflexivity must inform a collective action that challenges and transforms power relations. This remains the key challenge for development.

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One important way forward in overcoming this challenge is through applying the negotiation techniques explored in the conflict resolution literature, such as the

Harvard Negotiating Team's "Getting to Yes," and Mark Juergensmeyer’s “Gandhi"s

Way: A Manual of Conflict Resolution.” These works deal with the problem of inequity of power, how to build resources of political power through nonviolent protest, and how to assess when a compromise is legitimate, and more.

I end by asking, what is the path forward for Lamu? When I first arrived in

Lamu I thought that the UNESCO World Heritage designation was of great importance. Yet I came to learn that the designation gives status and recognition to a specific culture and environment in Lamu Old Town. This designation fails to take account of the changing nature of the area and people and retards endogenous development. Thus we see the cost of maintaining the homes in traditional ways in the old town rising beyond the means of the locals, driving the local population to sell to richer foreign clients, maintaining the integrity of the buildings, but diminishing the culture. As Hadija wrote in Chonjo Magazine, a local publication, in an article entitled Going… going… gone—life in old town Lamu:

“These cultural traditions are disappearing fast in old town because of

the number of Europeans and Americans who are gobbling up houses.

A stroll down the backstreets of old town brings this situation into

sharp relief. The houses are lovely, or at least will be when the dust

settles from all the renovation going on, but the streets are lifeless—

no children playing, no Indian music floating out of open windows,

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no smell of viazi on the fire, no neighbourly chats exchanged. Yes,

the life of old neighbourhoods are transforming in front of our eyes.

And nothing is being done to stop it.”

On Lamu Island we find endogenous development happening outside of the

UNESCO enclave, in the unplanned settlements that are being built across the island.

When I visited Lamu in 2008 the area referred to as coconut beach consisted of a sparse number of mud huts and simple homes. The beaches were littered with shells and a large group of children ran around helping me spot the most colorful shells.

There were trash bags and other debris also washing up on shore, but the area was still rather natural. When I returned in 2011 the area was full of ropes and stakes lining plots that ran nearly up to the waterline, half-built concrete structures rose two and occasionally three stories high.

As I strolled through the area, one young man asked if I was looking to purchase a home there. I told him I wasn’t. A search of homes for sale in the

UNESCO protected area of Lamu Old Town (www.lamuislandproperty.com) turn up the following prices (in US $). The Wildebeest Lodge: $350,000 (American owner).

The Kivundoni House: $340,000. Kivundoni Ruin (for restoration – the remains of a very large 18th century Swahili mansion): $92,000 (European owner).

Lamu is changing. With or without a new port and the LAPSSET Corridor, its residents are demanding change. My experience with Save Lamu points towards a continued reflexivity and ability and desire to learn, cope and adapt to evolving

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factors. On the whole, Save Lamu has been able to turn reflexivity into collective learning, consensus and ultimately collective action at the local level.

Yet the LAPSSET Corridor could quickly obliterate the social and environmental structures necessary for Save Lamu to achieve their objectives. One argument made over and over again by Hadija and Samia, and in letters to various

Ministers and government officials, is that Save Lamu needs information. As the government provides information, such as the EIA and the feasibility study, Save

Lamu will be better situated to make arguments on behalf of Lamu to achieve their goals and objectives. As the current process suggests, however, the government may not release the information, thus keeping Save Lamu in a bind.

A quick look at the mission and summary of objectives between the

Government of Kenya and Save Lamu (listed in the table below) highlights a lack of friction points. Indeed there is always a tactical difficulty of placing different values into the same frame. If Save Lamu wants to preserve the cultural and social identity of the indigenous communities in Lamu they must continue to present specific alternative development plans which provide friction points which can alter the proposed outcome. The BCPs must be initiated and the information compiled in ways that can show alternative development.

Entity Government of Kenya Save Lamu

Mission Create a globally competitive and The mission of Save Lamu is to prosperous nation with a high quality of engage communities and life by 2030, that aims to transform stakeholders to ensure participatory Kenya into a newly industrializing, decision-making so as to achieve

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middle-income country providing a high sustainable and responsible quality of life to all its citizens in a clean development and preserve the and secure environment. environmental, social and cultural integrity of the Lamu community

Summary of The objectives of the LAPSSET The objectives of Save Lamu are Objectives Corridor focus on enhancing Kenya’s focused on mitigating local impacts position as a gateway and transport hub of the LAPSSET Corridor by to the broader Central and East African strengthening community knowledge region—opening up routes for further and participation. trade expansion—and beginning to exploit the resources of northern Kenya, including oil, minerals, and livestock.

I recommend that Save Lamu identify specifically the important social, cultural, historical and environmental interests that should be protected. What is it that most defines Lamu? Most importantly in relation to the LAPSSET Corridor,

Save Lamu should construct a development plan that keeps local, small-scale control of the tourism industry which highlights the key social, cultural, historical and environmental components which they’ve identified.

As Mark Juergensmeyer (1984 p. 38) writes, “If your opponent has not totally limited your options, then you can fight in the most direct way a Gandhian can: you can simply start carrying out your alternative to the conflict as if you had already won the right to do so.” Such non-violent development is one way to broaden the power and effectiveness of Save Lamu.

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